Posts Tagged ‘feudalism’

Mouths appear to have dropped open everywhere at the decision of the law lords on bank charges. Certainly it is difficult to understand on what basis the decision was made.First let us be clear what they – appear, anyway – to have said. This is only that the Office of Fair Trading does not have legal power to investigate value for money.

What they have NOT said is whether the charges were, or were not, value for money. Nor whether the charges were fair or unfair.

Indeed, their decision is correctly being described as a technicality. In other words, no matter what the case itself is about, the manner of conducting either the case, or the matters contributing to the case, were incorrect on procedural grounds. At least their opinion is that it is incorrect in that way.

I am not a law lord; evident as it may already be to you, I want it to be clear!

But I have great difficulty in seeing how the Office of Fair Trading is not empowered to investigate value for money. This has been at the heart of trading rules and laws for as long as recorded history.

From the standards for weights and money itself, to the arcane details of contract, value for money has been at the heart of legislative process. How can fairness be expressed without reference to value for money?

I am not even sure this is in keeping with the new Lending Code!

My advice is to move your accounts away from the big banks. Many of the building societies have much more reasonable approaches. And the Co-op Bank may be another good repository for your current account. Certainly you are going to have to spend time and though reading the terms and conditions.

Perhaps we should look to a funny little comment by a correspondent on TV tonight. This was to the effect that the cost to the banks would be billions of pounds, and that was concerning the highest ranks of government.

Perhaps once again we are seeing the unreasoned triumph of the banks over the people. Welcome to the new feudalism.

How is it, that when I saw Peter Mandelson was involved, I started looking for the catch?

Our Business Secretary with Gareth Thomas, Consumer Affairs Minister, held a meeting with credit card companies [not sure who came, but I’m looking!] to get more time for debtors to organise their affairs. The target was described as ‘breathing space’. http://uk.reuters.com/article/personalFinanceNews

Now I am not even sure how that fits with the information that the reason for the meeting was to express concerns to the representatives about the high level of interest rates charged on credit and store cards.

And a joint statement declares: ‘…the … industry would report back in two weeks’ time [sic – note superfluous “…’ time…”] on a set of fair principles to help card borrowers to manage their debts… [my italics and my disgust!].

I’m not asking you to share my despairing feelings about the poor grammar from senior members of the government, but I am asking you to note how debtors will be hurt, not helped, by all this.

Bear in mind the Consumer Credit Licence, the Consumer Protection Regulations 2008 and the Banking Code all give much better protection than a set time. Not to mention the directives of the European Union Commission – of which Lord Mandelson was, until recently, a Commissioner. Is he with the people or with business?

AND let us be quite clear, this is an attempt to steal the right to represent oneself. An attempt to breach ancient British law.

The new dictatorial requirement will be that ‘…customers in difficulty would now get 30 days grace … IF [my emphasis] a debt advice agency was [not “is”, note] helping … a repayment plan…’. Further in this from this arrogant group ‘… could be [my emphasis] extended for a further 30 days subject to demonstratable progress being made…’.

My own experience is that I have negotiated for myself with 11 companies, and none of these negotiations were completed inside the incredibly restrictive 60 days of this great gift from the keen brain of the Lord Mandelson. In fact I have four negotiations which are taking over 18 months.

Who is to judge, in the terms of this carve-up, what is demonstrable progress. In negotiation one is in a starting position of disagreement, and the idea that one side or the other may be an arbitrator is nonsensical and dictatorial.

And, by the way, what about the role of the Financial Ombudsman Service which this undercuts in the most destructive way – certainly from a debtors’ point of view.

And the industry has ‘…agreed to look at [my italics] its practice of risk-based re-pricing…’. Readers of this blog will know I wrote a series of articles many weeks back on the disgusting level of interest rates. That the government has only just paid attention to we ordinary people who are truly hurting shows how little regard it has for us.

A government spokesman is reported to have said the government is ‘unhappy’ about ‘increases of up to 10 per cent OR MORE [my emphasis]’.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I want a government that is raging angry about such profiteering and instead of inviting the sector to make the debtor’s position worse is prepared to actually make them obey the existing regulations.

That the negotiations appear to be set on limiting our options, and not improving them is worrying to say the least.